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Guessing this is a hugely unpopular opinion here: A mafia engages in racketeering/extortion. They take a game that’s fair, and make it unfair. Instead of creat

Guessing this is a hugely unpopular opinion here: A mafia engages in racketeering/extortion. They take a game that’s fair, and make it unfair. Instead of creating value, they steal it. Without the mafia, people would retain more value for themselves. Apple, on the other hand, created and maintains an enormous platform. Without Apple, the App Store would not exist. The rules are posted to a webpage and are applied more or less equally to everyone. All the transactions that occur in this App Store are value they enable to exist. Without Apple, instead of creating an app you would have to create an app and the platform and distribution mechanism etc. The cut they take, in light of this, seems more than reasonable to me. The hate Apple gets here and other places seems really misplaced to me. They’re not a common carrier. They’re not a monopoly. They’re not even close to being a monopoly. They’re a huge company, but there is plenty of competition out there. I don’t understand why people act like they can’t make the rules of their platform. Much less why people would say they are a mafia. Concretely about this post: it seems really naive! > "Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase, and then turned around and demanded we add IAP. This sounds like a child making up a story for the principal. Come on... really? Proton mail is a huge thing. Apple’s rules are public and easy to understand. How is it that I can understand the App Store rules but Proton Mail cannot? Apple want their cut! They don’t want a mechanism to side step or encourage users to side step that cut. It’s so simple.

MagnumOpus 6y ago
You aggregate Apple the platform creating hardware and OS company with Apple App Store which extorts rents due to dominant market position on the Apple hardware far disproportionate to the value that it adds. (If it added that much value that 30% of revenues for every app that can be downloaded from there was fair, then they would have to prohibit other app stores.) The App Store is not necessarily linked to the hardware (just as IE isn’t linked to Windows, to show a similar antitrust issue), so Apple forcing the exclusive App Store platform contracts on users and value creating content companies looks a hell of a lot like a racket.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throw0101a 6y ago
> Without Apple, instead of creating an app you would have to create an app and the platform and distribution mechanism etc. And? As Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire et al observed: > We started selling over the web in the mid ’90s. * https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/29/what-tim-cook-left-out-of-his-version-of-app-store-history/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/29/what-tim... He says they'd give up 5% to a payment processor, not 30%. John Gruber: > To omit the fact that there was — dating back to the mid-’90s, well over a decade before the iPhone App Store — a thriving market for software sold directly over a thing called “The Internet” is sophistry. Most Mac software is still sold and distributed this way today. If App Stores are so great why is most Mac software sold outside the Mac App Store? * https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/parsing_cooks_opening_statement https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/parsing_cooks_opening_sta... And you don't have to build it yourself, as there is now SaaS for all of this, and I'd hazard to guess that they'd be less that 30%. For example the Carbon Copy Cloner folks redirect to a third-party: * https://bombich.com/store https://bombich.com/store And even if they took 30%, you'd still have the freedom to write apps the way you want and not be beholden to Apple's guidelines.
- kolinko 6y ago
  How old are you? Do you remember first hand how it was? The market for apps on phones was a disaster before the app store. Both for users and producers. 30% was absurdly low compared to other options (again - on mobile, not web).
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > The market for apps on phones was a disaster before the app store. Both for users and producers. Because of the fragmentation of the phone market, specifically with-in even a single manufacturer's sphere. There was so much variation in screen size, CPU power, memory, keyboard layout even for (say) Nokia's own line of products that Nokia's own app store had to ask "which phone do you have?". It was a non-uniform mess because the phones available pre-iPhone were a a non-uniform mess. Apple's iOS App Store was able to have a simple design because the iPhone(s) available had a simple design, and developers could write to a known quantity. When Apple changed screen size/resolution/density they ensured that scaling from older non-updated apps occurred in a reasonable manner. To a certain extent this is still true with Android, as third-party manufacturers have spotty updates once hardware is released. Google used to have a public dashboard with the market share of each version, but now you have to go into the Android Studio to look at the minimum SDK cumulative market share: * https://www.xda-developers.com/android-version-distribution-statistics-android-studio/ https://www.xda-developers.com/android-version-distribution-... Their current dashboard has some data on screen capabilities, OpenGL, and Vulkan: * https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards Meanwhile with iOS if you target iOS 12 you'll get 94% of that market: * https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ If you need to worry about hardware capabilities, iOS 14 supports the iPhone 6S (released 2015) so that can be used a minimum (at least for 'low-intensity' stuff, i.e., not-games).
Drew_ 6y ago
Apple has 100% market share of iOS application distribution and therefore has a monopoly on this market. In this position they can freely and arbitrarily govern what is and is not acceptable iOS software as well as how much it costs to produce and distribute iOS software with absolutely no competition that could benefit participants in this market. Allowing Apple to continue exercising absolute power over iOS software distribution does nothing but bolster Apple's revenue and hurt iOS software consumers and producers by limiting options and driving up costs.
- karpierz 6y ago
  Walmart has 100% market share of distribution inside Walmart stores, alert the DoJ.
  - dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
    They're driving up costs and hurting the consumer by not letting people into their stores to sell their own warez.
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    Apple is a country where only Wal-Mart can exist. Nice try.
    - dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
      That is a compelling analogy but I don’t think it holds because a country you can’t leave. You have to live in a country. Apple is an opt-in thing you choose for yourself and your next purchase can always be an Android.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
forty 6y ago
> They’re not even close to being a monopoly. They’re a huge company, but there is plenty of competition out there What's the competition for iOS app distribution? There might be competition on the customer side, but as far as I know there are none for the software/app vendors, which is why they can dictate their rules and choose the price (and it's not like customers have each a bunch of smartphones with different OSes, and you could say "Apple sucks so I'll make an Android app instead")
- kmbfjr 6y ago
  What's the competition for clothing distribution inside a Macy's? I mean, c'mon, it is their marketplace. Apple's customers have willingly chosen this, it wasn't forced upon them.
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    > Apple's customers have willingly chosen this, it wasn't forced upon them. There's a tentative (probably weak) argument to be made that the people who have bought Apple's hardware chose this. This is was simply inflicted on the developers, however. Regardless of the degree to which developers voluntarily develop for iOS, the rules by which they play are 100% dictated -- and they have no say in them at all (no free market) if they want access to Apple's 1 billion customers.
  - forty 6y ago
    The big difference is that customers can go to Macy's and one of their competitor the same day, they have the choice of marketplace. I don't ask for more, if people were able to have competing marketplaces on the iphone, then I don't think anyone would have a problem with Apple rules or pricing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cblconfederate 6y ago
Mafia is not a bunch of criminal thugs that just take and walk away, it's a social organization with its own rules that even cares about some of its members, marginalizes some, provides protection etc. Apple doesn't protect (its developers). It provides them some tools but it has shown no interest in them as humans or as entrepreneurs. Google may get a lot of hate too, but we remember that they ve built and promoted a lot of open platforms and open source stuff that stayed with us (despite their bad habit of shutting down services). Most other companies acted similarly. Apple is singularly capricious , and their primary appeal is their rich customer base, which they are waving like a carrot in front of everyone. It's only popular in US btw.
intricatedetail 6y ago
You are using a manipulation technique in your post and your whole point is that without Apple there wouldn't be an app store. The name itself is as generic as it gets and you would have other companies taking the lead.
Supermancho 6y ago
> Concretely about this post: it seems really naive! Proton Mail is not just an app. It's going to be up to the courts to re-affirm that a private party cannot force another party to give them profits of an unrelated product. These kinds of "deals" are partially what got the Teamsters in trouble and are characteristic of the criminal mobs (which included the mafia). "I heard you have a second job selling stocks, be a real same if something happened to your app" - classic protection racket. Calling others naive does not make your stance compelling.
- dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
  Apple is forcing something? What? Apple is giving Proton Mail the opportunity to come on to their platform and make more revenue. They are not forcing them on to their platform. If Apple didn’t exist, PM would simply not even have this opportunity. Mobs come into your business and demand revenue. Here proton mail is coming into Apple’s business and demanding revenue. Who’s the mob here? And yeah, word choice matters if you want to be credible and taken seriously. I called the tone of this post naive because “stumbled into some plans” all innocent-like is comically naive from a large company that openly sells plans, wants access to a third party market place, and acts like they’re entitled to that marketplace for free. Instead of projecting competence and offering a compelling legal argument, the post plays dumb, which is sad when coming from a company that sells global security. You’re a company selling me encrypted messaging and you’re confused by Apple’s highly readable store rules?
  - Supermancho 6y ago
    > Apple is forcing something? What? Compelling via contractual agreement. This is typically referred to as "forcing" a conditiobn. Classic enforcement of a clause. > Apple is giving Proton Mail the opportunity to come on to their platform and make more revenue. No. That is not what Apple is granting PM. Me putting up a hello world app does not grant me an opportunity to make more (any) revenue. There are additional concerns and limitations. > They are not forcing them on to their platform. Correct. > If Apple didn’t exist, PM would simply not even have this opportunity. Incorrect. If Apple and Apple USERS didn't exist, PM would not be able to be utilized by those users from an Apple device (since nothing else is special about the platform). This is a matter of perspective which we fundamentally disagree on. > Mobs come into your business and demand revenue. That is one of many tactics. > Here proton mail is coming into Apple’s business and demanding revenue. Incorrect. This is tiresome. It's not really worth picking apart your statements when you are disingenuously starting from : > if you want to be credible and taken seriously Name calling and no-true-scotsman is all heresay or noise. The courts can (and eventually will) decide what is acceptable. Things are not looking good when a business starts squeezing blood from the stone (Apple's own market). Good luck with whatever.

MagnumOpus 6y ago

You aggregate Apple the platform creating hardware and OS company with Apple App Store which extorts rents due to dominant market position on the Apple hardware far disproportionate to the value that it adds. (If it added that much value that 30% of revenues for every app that can be downloaded from there was fair, then they would have to prohibit other app stores.) The App Store is not necessarily linked to the hardware (just as IE isn’t linked to Windows, to show a similar antitrust issue), so Apple forcing the exclusive App Store platform contracts on users and value creating content companies looks a hell of a lot like a racket.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

throw0101a 6y ago

> Without Apple, instead of creating an app you would have to create an app and the platform and distribution mechanism etc. And? As Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire et al observed: > We started selling over the web in the mid ’90s. * https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/29/what-tim-cook-left-out-of-his-version-of-app-store-history/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/29/what-tim... He says they'd give up 5% to a payment processor, not 30%. John Gruber: > To omit the fact that there was — dating back to the mid-’90s, well over a decade before the iPhone App Store — a thriving market for software sold directly over a thing called “The Internet” is sophistry. Most Mac software is still sold and distributed this way today. If App Stores are so great why is most Mac software sold outside the Mac App Store? * https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/parsing_cooks_opening_statement https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/parsing_cooks_opening_sta... And you don't have to build it yourself, as there is now SaaS for all of this, and I'd hazard to guess that they'd be less that 30%. For example the Carbon Copy Cloner folks redirect to a third-party: * https://bombich.com/store https://bombich.com/store And even if they took 30%, you'd still have the freedom to write apps the way you want and not be beholden to Apple's guidelines.

kolinko 6y ago
How old are you? Do you remember first hand how it was? The market for apps on phones was a disaster before the app store. Both for users and producers. 30% was absurdly low compared to other options (again - on mobile, not web).
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > The market for apps on phones was a disaster before the app store. Both for users and producers. Because of the fragmentation of the phone market, specifically with-in even a single manufacturer's sphere. There was so much variation in screen size, CPU power, memory, keyboard layout even for (say) Nokia's own line of products that Nokia's own app store had to ask "which phone do you have?". It was a non-uniform mess because the phones available pre-iPhone were a a non-uniform mess. Apple's iOS App Store was able to have a simple design because the iPhone(s) available had a simple design, and developers could write to a known quantity. When Apple changed screen size/resolution/density they ensured that scaling from older non-updated apps occurred in a reasonable manner. To a certain extent this is still true with Android, as third-party manufacturers have spotty updates once hardware is released. Google used to have a public dashboard with the market share of each version, but now you have to go into the Android Studio to look at the minimum SDK cumulative market share: * https://www.xda-developers.com/android-version-distribution-statistics-android-studio/ https://www.xda-developers.com/android-version-distribution-... Their current dashboard has some data on screen capabilities, OpenGL, and Vulkan: * https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards Meanwhile with iOS if you target iOS 12 you'll get 94% of that market: * https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ If you need to worry about hardware capabilities, iOS 14 supports the iPhone 6S (released 2015) so that can be used a minimum (at least for 'low-intensity' stuff, i.e., not-games).

Drew_ 6y ago

Apple has 100% market share of iOS application distribution and therefore has a monopoly on this market. In this position they can freely and arbitrarily govern what is and is not acceptable iOS software as well as how much it costs to produce and distribute iOS software with absolutely no competition that could benefit participants in this market. Allowing Apple to continue exercising absolute power over iOS software distribution does nothing but bolster Apple's revenue and hurt iOS software consumers and producers by limiting options and driving up costs.

karpierz 6y ago
Walmart has 100% market share of distribution inside Walmart stores, alert the DoJ.
- dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
  They're driving up costs and hurting the consumer by not letting people into their stores to sell their own warez.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Apple is a country where only Wal-Mart can exist. Nice try.
  - dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
    That is a compelling analogy but I don’t think it holds because a country you can’t leave. You have to live in a country. Apple is an opt-in thing you choose for yourself and your next purchase can always be an Android.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

forty 6y ago

> They’re not even close to being a monopoly. They’re a huge company, but there is plenty of competition out there What's the competition for iOS app distribution? There might be competition on the customer side, but as far as I know there are none for the software/app vendors, which is why they can dictate their rules and choose the price (and it's not like customers have each a bunch of smartphones with different OSes, and you could say "Apple sucks so I'll make an Android app instead")

kmbfjr 6y ago
What's the competition for clothing distribution inside a Macy's? I mean, c'mon, it is their marketplace. Apple's customers have willingly chosen this, it wasn't forced upon them.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  > Apple's customers have willingly chosen this, it wasn't forced upon them. There's a tentative (probably weak) argument to be made that the people who have bought Apple's hardware chose this. This is was simply inflicted on the developers, however. Regardless of the degree to which developers voluntarily develop for iOS, the rules by which they play are 100% dictated -- and they have no say in them at all (no free market) if they want access to Apple's 1 billion customers.
- forty 6y ago
  The big difference is that customers can go to Macy's and one of their competitor the same day, they have the choice of marketplace. I don't ask for more, if people were able to have competing marketplaces on the iphone, then I don't think anyone would have a problem with Apple rules or pricing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

cblconfederate 6y ago

Mafia is not a bunch of criminal thugs that just take and walk away, it's a social organization with its own rules that even cares about some of its members, marginalizes some, provides protection etc. Apple doesn't protect (its developers). It provides them some tools but it has shown no interest in them as humans or as entrepreneurs. Google may get a lot of hate too, but we remember that they ve built and promoted a lot of open platforms and open source stuff that stayed with us (despite their bad habit of shutting down services). Most other companies acted similarly. Apple is singularly capricious , and their primary appeal is their rich customer base, which they are waving like a carrot in front of everyone. It's only popular in US btw.

intricatedetail 6y ago

You are using a manipulation technique in your post and your whole point is that without Apple there wouldn't be an app store. The name itself is as generic as it gets and you would have other companies taking the lead.

Supermancho 6y ago

> Concretely about this post: it seems really naive! Proton Mail is not just an app. It's going to be up to the courts to re-affirm that a private party cannot force another party to give them profits of an unrelated product. These kinds of "deals" are partially what got the Teamsters in trouble and are characteristic of the criminal mobs (which included the mafia). "I heard you have a second job selling stocks, be a real same if something happened to your app" - classic protection racket. Calling others naive does not make your stance compelling.

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
Apple is forcing something? What? Apple is giving Proton Mail the opportunity to come on to their platform and make more revenue. They are not forcing them on to their platform. If Apple didn’t exist, PM would simply not even have this opportunity. Mobs come into your business and demand revenue. Here proton mail is coming into Apple’s business and demanding revenue. Who’s the mob here? And yeah, word choice matters if you want to be credible and taken seriously. I called the tone of this post naive because “stumbled into some plans” all innocent-like is comically naive from a large company that openly sells plans, wants access to a third party market place, and acts like they’re entitled to that marketplace for free. Instead of projecting competence and offering a compelling legal argument, the post plays dumb, which is sad when coming from a company that sells global security. You’re a company selling me encrypted messaging and you’re confused by Apple’s highly readable store rules?
- Supermancho 6y ago
  > Apple is forcing something? What? Compelling via contractual agreement. This is typically referred to as "forcing" a conditiobn. Classic enforcement of a clause. > Apple is giving Proton Mail the opportunity to come on to their platform and make more revenue. No. That is not what Apple is granting PM. Me putting up a hello world app does not grant me an opportunity to make more (any) revenue. There are additional concerns and limitations. > They are not forcing them on to their platform. Correct. > If Apple didn’t exist, PM would simply not even have this opportunity. Incorrect. If Apple and Apple USERS didn't exist, PM would not be able to be utilized by those users from an Apple device (since nothing else is special about the platform). This is a matter of perspective which we fundamentally disagree on. > Mobs come into your business and demand revenue. That is one of many tactics. > Here proton mail is coming into Apple’s business and demanding revenue. Incorrect. This is tiresome. It's not really worth picking apart your statements when you are disingenuously starting from : > if you want to be credible and taken seriously Name calling and no-true-scotsman is all heresay or noise. The courts can (and eventually will) decide what is acceptable. Things are not looking good when a business starts squeezing blood from the stone (Apple's own market). Good luck with whatever.